


I've had this sitting in my drafts for five years and I still haven't thought of a good title, lord help us all

by Fallowsthorn



Series: Chatfic & Other Miscellaneous Errata [4]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon, Dom/sub Undertones, Future Fic, M/M, Multi, Multiverse Shenanigans, Not Canon Compliant, Purple Prose, also too much past progressive, not beta read we die like mne, the kind of thing that could inspire a universe if i hadn't just run out of ideas after a while, this deserves the weird look you just gave the relationship tags, too many semicolons, unsatisfying ending, written pre dh2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 22:05:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16982646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallowsthorn/pseuds/Fallowsthorn
Summary: The Outsider dumps hc!Corvo into lc!Corvo's timeline, mostly for shits and giggles. There's no plot, I never figured out where I wanted to go with this. There is some sex, though.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Google Docs tells me I started writing this back in 2013 (!!), and it... shows. I've held onto it for so long because I thought maybe I would eventually come up with a direction for it and probably redo the whole thing, but I haven't and it's been literally over half a decade and I think it's time to give up and release it out into the wild where it can be free.
> 
> Also, I have a pwp involving one of the OCs here that I do plan to finish and publish properly, because of course I do.
> 
> Oh, and Miss Kennings is a trans woman, which presumably would have come up at some point to make it more obvious to the reader but I didn't get that far. She's mostly incidental.

Emily had been on the throne four years when the Outsider finally made his grand re-entrance into Corvo’s dreams. He’d gotten so used to normalcy, so used to the way things were - had been - should be - that he’d forgotten the static blue clarity of the Void, how its chill twined in the fingers of his left hand and clouded in his lungs like a lover, overeager and too close.

He walked aimlessly for a while, Blinking almost effortlessly, slowing time at one moment and rolling and scampering into the mind of a rat the next, reveling in it and marvelling at how he never became winded, even when he had left the familiar blood-splattered tower of his dreams far behind for a foreign landscape that made as much sense to him as the Outsider.

He stopped by a fountain, ornate and gilded and impossible in ways that made Corvo’s eyes hurt if he stared for too long. He didn’t stay there out of any real need, but because he felt drawn to it, and he realized why when the Outsider appeared above it.

He felt the Mark ache in a low resonance of whale-song, a keen for the dying leviathans, and looked up into black smoke and black eyes. The Outsider was inscrutable even when he was outright stating his intentions, and when he was like this, just standing - floating, maybe, Corvo wasn’t sure - with his arms crossed and gaze steady, he was a total mystery.

Corvo just stared back, idly trailing his fingers in the fountain as it swam back and forth between water and oil and whale’s blood.

Eventually, the Outsider said, “You’re bored, aren’t you?”

Corvo waited.

“You pretend to be happy that Dunwall is healing, that the Empire is prospering, that Emily is safe - and you are. At least, the last one. She is... everything to you.” A shade of surprise colored the Outsider’s voice, and he paused, then shook his head. “But as for the rest.... You miss it. You hunger for it, to press your back against a cold wall, holding your breath to avoid being seen. You dream of perfectly balancing so that at just the right moment you can halt the world and, undetected, leave your quiet trail of sleep and bruises.

“Never death. But you could have, so easily. Just a flash of that sword would be so easy. And so, I wonder....”

The Outsider tilted his head to the side, and regarded Corvo, who sat still and silent. Whatever the Outsider had come to do, he would do it whether or not Corvo had any say in the matter; better not to say anything, and see where this would lead.

“I wonder what you might do, when you saw that side of yourself.”

At this, Corvo looked up in alarm, and no small amount of suspicion. This was the Outsider. He didn’t wonder idly.

The Outsider smiled, and gestured vaguely. “You are simply... fascinating, Corvo. Can you blame me for getting bored as well? You’re a weapon, as much of a non-lethal one as you try to be; you are not made to sit in a pretty cage gathering dust. I should know. I made you.

“And you made yourself, six months after your world died. You held yourself back, and... some of you didn’t. All of you didn’t, somewhere.”

The Outsider shook his head, seeing that he’d lost Corvo, and with a wave of his hand included the fountain in the conversation. “Like this. When you first look at it, you see that the water is pouring down, to be collected in the pool. But then you look at it a different way, and realize that the water from the pool is really pouring up, to be held in the dish. Or maybe you focus just slightly off, and you find that both can exist in the same view.” He shrugged.

Corvo woke up with a start, and spent the rest of a sleepless night wondering what had just happened, and how much he should worry.

* * *

It was a week of careful questions and odd looks from Emily before Corvo’s fretting finally had a source. A mysterious masked man, who looked uncannily like the felon who’d been terrorizing the populace a few years ago, had been seen roaming the streets. Corvo had shaken his head just slightly at Emily’s surreptitious look, which had been enough for her, but the incident still preyed on his conscience.

Two days after that, a terrified civilian had brought a report of the masked man shooting a clean hole through a Watchman’s head with a crossbow bolt, then “vanishing like ‘e was some kinna ghost!” Corvo gathered his mask, crossbow, and sword, and presented them to his Empress.

Emily said she trusted him, though, and tasked him with hunting down the felon using all the means at his disposal. The significant glance at his left hand told him what that meant, though the phrase was unsurprisingly absent when she made the announcement in court the next day.

Corvo had chosen three Guards he trusted in front of the court, and entrusted them with Emily’s life in his absence, with the full and proper amount of ceremony as benefitted the safety of an Empress. Quietly, later, he took two different groups of Guards aside, five in each, and told them that if they could spot the “traitors” and “assassins” he’d set up in their midst as a test, there’d be a bonus in it for them. He also told a third group to try and get as close to the Empress as possible, in undercover plainclothes outfits, to ensure her safety. Emily, of course, found the whole thing hilarious, and promptly informed Corvo that he worried far too much.

She didn’t know the half of it.

Corvo was beginning to suspect what exactly the Outsider had meant with all that cryptic talk about the fountain. Of course, it could simply be some other random criminal with exactly the same outfit, build... gear... mask... uh, supernatural powers... as him, but honestly... with a list like that, what were the odds?

He left just after dusk, and for the next week and a half scoured the city, using all his fame or in some cases, infamy, with various factions to track down the Masked Felon. And yes, he did appreciate the grim irony in using the name. At last, one of his leads paid off, and he found himself staring through his mask optics at an abandoned apartment on - where else? - Clavering Boulevard.

The Masked Felon - oh, who was he kidding. The other him was lounging on a pile of crates and boxes, reading a book. A small stockpile of Elixirs and Remedies sat next to him, as did a few loaves of bread, grapes, and other foodstuffs on his left, and his weapons and mask on his right.

Corvo Blinked to the windowsill, then froze as the other him stiffened and looked around. Luckily, he was behind him, so he quietly crouched down on the small platform just inside the open window, waiting.

After a moment or two, the other him shrugged, loading his pistol as a preventative measure, and went back to his book. Corvo breathed out slightly, and crept down the stairs and around in a wide circle, not wanting to Blink again and risk alerting his other self. The pistol was a lost cause, but Corvo vaulted up to the top of the stack of boxes his other self was leaning against, and peered down at his book.

Seriously? That one? Well... Corvo could think of worse ways to spend one’s time. A few of the pages were dog-eared, and the whole book looked fairly well-worn. Clearly the other him hadn’t had much to do in almost two weeks.

The pistol clicked, and Corvo focused on the sound to find the business end pointed idly at his head. The other him hadn’t even looked up. “You want me to read out loud or something?”

_A little bit,_ said a traitorous part of Corvo’s brain. He stomped on it and said out loud, “I’m guessing he told you something about a fountain and you have no idea where you are?”

The effect was immediate. The other him dropped the book, stood, and whirled around, pistol in his right hand now pointed firmly at Corvo’s head and his left hand glowing an eldritch golden-blue. Corvo, for his part, hadn’t drawn any weapons, but had readied his own Blink, anticipating any sudden movement on... his part.

They held that tableau for a few tense moments, frozen still as the Void’s mockeries, until the other him dropped his hands with a laugh. “No, he said something about a use for me as more than a shiny sharp thing and when I woke up, the city was a lot less bloody.”

Corvo relaxed as well, though he didn’t let down his guard, and he didn’t hop down from his perch. “Huh. He gave me a whole speech. When did... what’s happened to you?”

His double simply looked at him, intense and…. Corvo couldn’t put a name to the other emotion in his double’s eyes. It was too harsh to be yearning, too protective to be hungry, too purposeful to be wild. “She’s _alive,_ ” the double said, and that told Corvo everything.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a pause, unsure of what to do.

The other him dropped his gaze, and swept a hand over his eyes. “Yes. Well.” He looked back up at Corvo. “So what are we supposed to do now? Kill the city? Protect Emily? Run around playing lots of ‘you’re in two places at once!’ jokes?”

Corvo shrugged somewhat ruefully, and said, “You did kill an Officer of the Watch. I need to either kill you or, preferably, capture you alive.”

“Ah,” the other him said, and gave him the smallest smirk. _Is that really what I look like when I have a trick up my sleeve? Shit._ “That might be something of a problem.”

They both readied their swords and powers at the same time. “Why is that?” Corvo asked.

“Bye,” his double said, and Blinked towards the door. Corvo had the height advantage, though, and Blinked at almost the same instant, so that he came crashing down on the other him as he tried to run. They rolled and fetched up against one of the support beams for the roof, Corvo straddling his double as the latter squirmed. Corvo fumbled with his crossbow pouch, trying to get one of the sleep darts out to jam into his other self.

He took too long, though, and the other him hooked his fingers in the mouth of the mask and pulled it up and off. Abruptly, he stopped struggling, and just stared as the mask clattered to the floor. “Holy shit.”

Corvo, who’d done approximately the same thing twenty minutes ago, waited patiently.

“Holy _shit,_ ” his double said again. “You look exactly like me!”

“I beg to differ,” Corvo said dryly. “ _You_ look exactly like _me._ ”

The other him waved this away as semantics. “So... now what?”

“What do you mean, now what?” Corvo eyed his double warily. He had the dart ready, but his curiosity made him hold off on using it.

“Well, I can’t very well shoot you in the head. We’re too good-looking for that.”

Corvo opened his mouth, shut it, and gave himself a weird look. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Um-”

His double might have been about to say something else, but Corvo, out of the corner of his eye, saw the Mark to his right beginning to glow, and jabbed the needle into his other self’s arm.

“That’s not fair,” the other him said, and passed out.

It took Corvo most of an hour to reach Dunwall Tower via the rooftops of the city, mostly Blinking from spot to spot. As he neared the patio, he saw a few Guards take aim at him before recognizing his clothing and waving. He made a note of their faces, and resolved to give them a bonus, given that he wasn’t wearing his mask at the time.

His double he delivered not to the holding cell, but to his own chambers. He still bound his hands and feet, and made sure he couldn’t get up from the chair he was tied to, but he wouldn’t subject himself to waking up (again) in a cold dark room with cold bright steel against his wrists. Coldridge had been hell enough for one lifetime, never mind two.

With that done, and with the duplicate gear stowed safely away in the rafters, Corvo locked the doors and windows, left a few pears out in case his double woke up and inevitably got loose, and went to find Emily.

She was strolling on the grounds with her entourage, prim and properly taking a step every couple seconds. Corvo felt proud of her, given that knew how much she wanted to give them all the slip and run wild into the woods. He would have, in her place.

He stopped in front of her and bowed deeply, expressing his meaningless formalities for the benefit of the assembled nobles. Emily returned the platitudes, and sent her shoal of remoras away, to Corvo’s relief. He’d never quite liked the court, and after Lady Boyle’s party, he felt distinctly uncomfortable around a great many of them.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Emily’s polite and restrained interest turned sharp and glittering. “Who is he?” she asked immediately. “Is my city safe?”

Corvo, for a moment, lost what he was about to say as he saw Jessamine in every line of Emily’s impossibly young face. _My city._

But she was waiting, so he gathered his wits and said simply, “I do not wish to speak of my findings where idle ears might hear them. May we retire to my chambers, for security’s sake?”

Emily’s eyes said _What are you doing?,_ but her mouth said smoothly, “Of course, Lord Protector. That would please me greatly, and I am glad to know you think foremost of our country’s safety.” Because there were, of course, always idle ears, and always those who could not be trusted.

Corvo bade her wait outside his rooms for a moment as he checked on “the captive”. Surprisingly, his double was actually still captive, as opposed to roaming free with his mask on and sword shining.

The other him smirked at Corvo. “Really? Tying me up already? We haven’t even exchanged flowers-” He broke off, staring behind Corvo, speechless.

Corvo turned to see Emily, equally shocked, her hand still on the door. She took a few steps into the room, a little unsteadily, glancing at Corvo to see if this was some kind of joke. He just shrugged helplessly.

The other him slid out of the chair to kneel on the floor, awestruck. As if in a dream, he reached out to Emily, then faltered when Corvo stepped between them. He spared Corvo only a glance, then focused his complete attention back to Emily. 

“You’re... real?” he murmured. Corvo didn’t know whether his double was aware he was speaking out loud. “You fell... I saw you and Havelock... you look so much older... my Emily, you’re _alive._ ”

“She isn’t yours,” Corvo said sharply, at the same moment that Emily said tentatively, “Who is this?”

There was a beat of silence, then Corvo said, “He’s me. I think.”

“He’s acting funny,” Emily said.

“I’m right here,” the other Corvo said, finally breaking out of his stupor. He straightened, and Emily looked between the two of them.

“How will anyone tell you apart?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” they said in unison. Emily tried not to laugh as they glanced at each other. It was obvious, though, at least to Corvo. It was in the line of his double’s shoulders, hunched slightly, as though he was perpetually bracing himself against the world. It was in the feral glint of his eyes and teeth, the way his hands were always free and the right one occasionally twirled a phantom sword. He was so different in his lack of subtlety, in his blunt expectation of attack, that Corvo could not imagine him as anything but alien.

For some reason, it had failed to dawn on him - and apparently on his other self as well - that other people might not see those subtleties, and thus have no idea how to easily tell them apart.

One other thing overrode explaining that, though - “Out of all the questions you could possibly ask here, you go with, ‘How do we know which is which?’”

Emily just gave him a long look. “It’s a valid question. We aren’t going to kill him at least until we know what’s going on, and that means we need an easy way to tell you apart, so that some random stranger isn’t mistaken for my Lord Protector all the time.”

“I’m not a stranger,” the other him objected. “I’m Corvo.”

“I’m Corvo,” Corvo clarified.

“How come?”

“I was here first.”

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. “I foresee headaches,” she muttered. Both Corvos shut their mouths, somewhat chagrined. After a moment spent staring at the floor, she continued. “All right. For now, both of you will live here. Let’s keep this from everyone else indefinitely, which means only one of you can be outside at any given time.” She gave the doppelganger an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but that means that as this Corvo is my Royal Protector, you’ll be more or less confined to these rooms for the immediate future. I’ll make sure you have enough to eat and so on, and I’d like you to tell Corvo your story. We’ll see where we stand a week from now.”

They both nodded, Corvo glad to have some idea of what to do and the double presumably glad to not be summarily executed. Emily turned to go, then turned back and said, “Oh, and Corvo?”

“Yes?” they both said.

She arched an eyebrow. “The second Corvo. We need something else to call you, and a way to tell you casually from the Corvo we all know. You have a week.”

The other him nodded silently, and watched as Emily left, closing the door behind her.

Corvo was the first to move, walking over to inspect the ropes which had, as he’d suspected, been summarily Blinked out of and dismissed. “Lot of good these did.”

“If you’d wanted to tie me up, you could have asked,” his double said idly, but it was automatic, dull through the shock of having seen and spoken with Emily. Corvo glanced sideways at him, and saw him staring down at his own mask, tracing the copper wire with the pad of his thumb.

“Maybe we had better figure out what went....” He hesitated.

The other him snorted. “Went wrong, yes. No, you don’t have to try being nice. Dunwall was dying and the Empire was going with it. I was on my way to boarding a ship bound for anywhere else when I woke up here.”

Corvo lingered another moment, then nodded, sitting in the chair. “We escaped Coldridge....”

The other him nodded back, and found his own seat on a couch against the wall. “With help from the Loyalists, yes. We were tasked with killing High Overseer Campbell, and Callista wanted us to save her uncle. We killed both of them....”

Corvo sat up in alarm. “What? No, I didn’t. Both of them!? Why?”

His double shrugged. “I was supposed to kill Campbell. Campbell was going to poison Curnow. I wasn’t sure which glass he would take, or where the poison was, so I mixed them both together and hoped Campbell would take the first drink. He didn’t. Callista was disappointed, but I imagine so were the families of the other Watchmen and Overseers I killed that night.”

Corvo stared at his other self in horror. “How - how many did you kill?”

Another shrug. “I didn’t keep track. They were trying to kill me.”

“That....” Corvo gaped for a moment, then shook his head. “No wonder the city was falling apart around you,” he said coldly, and fetched a blank journal and a pen from a nearby cupboard. “I think you had better start from the beginning.”

* * *

“You need a name,” Corvo said, much later.

“I have a name,” his double said. He’d wandered around the room as he talked, unable to simply sit in one place. Currently he was lying upside-down in Corvo’s bed, looking at Corvo with his hair falling down and the blood rushing to his face.

“You have my name,” Corvo told him. “You need a different one.”

“I have my name too,” his double pointed out, rolling over to prop his head in his hands, then waved away the inevitable protest as Corvo opened his mouth. “Yes, I know. But just because I’m from somewhere else doesn’t make me any less Corvo Attano than it makes you. Aren’t we the same person?”

Corvo snorted and gestured to the open journal in front of him, a quarter filled with longhand dictation. “No. At some point, yes, but you’ve killed more people than maybe even the plague and I still can’t figure out why.”

“They were trying to kill me. And....” The other him paused, and looked away. “I was so angry, when I escaped. I wanted revenge.” He wet his lips unconsciously, and Corvo found himself mimicking the action, as he remembered the day before his planned execution.

“So you took it,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you liked it.”

“No!” His double sat up, looking indignant. Then he faltered. “Well - at first. There was... at first. But I escaped, and I was safe, and... and I’d killed people. They hadn’t tortured me, or hurt me. They were just....” He looked down at his hands, curled into fists, and spread them outwards, palms up. “Unlucky. And I don’t - I didn’t want-” He broke off again, then started over. “I didn’t want to be a murderer. So I said I’d had to, because they would have killed me if I hadn’t killed them, and after a little while I started believing it, because then they actually _did_ want to kill me. I’m no Watchman or Overseer. I am not a good person. Everything I do-”

“Everything we do,” Corvo cut in, “we do for one purpose: to protect Emily.”

The other him nodded, and tilted his head to the side. “We are the same person, really,” he said. “We just have different ways of going about it.”

Corvo looked at him strangely, and made no comment. “That doesn’t solve the problem of what to do now, though.”

His double looked at him dryly, standing to gestured exaggeratedly. “Well, the solution is obvious! We have these-” He grabbed one of the masks and tossed it from hand to hand, then put it on. “-and we look the same. So clearly, the one who looks like you is Corvo; and the one who looks like me is _The Masked Assassin_.” He put an extra flourish on the last words, and bowed, taking the mask off to reveal a sarcastic grin.

Corvo didn’t say anything at first, just frowned in thought and came closer to take the mask from his double. He turned it over and stared at the blue glass eyes, as though they would tell him what was supposed to happen now. “There is some tactical advantage in being able to be in two places at once,” he said quietly.

His double started, and stared at him. “It was a joke.”

“Still. We could do something with that. At the very least - pretend to be distracted, or drawn away, to lure out a potential attacker. Things like that.”

“Confuse opponents in fights. Win every costume contest ever. Make a fortune as an exotic act at the Golden Cat.”

Corvo gave his double a flat look. “I’m serious here.”

“So am I. That sounds like a really easy way to get rich.”

Corvo covered his eyes with his free hand briefly. “Never mind. Other than _using_ the fact that we look exactly the same, what do you suggest we do?”

The other him shrugged, and flopped back down on the bed. “I could just... leave. Leave Dunwall, or at least the Tower. Everything would go back to normal for you.”

Corvo set down the mask and crossed his arms, leaning against the bedframe. “What would I tell Emily?”

His double swallowed. “Tell her - I jumped out the window or something. That I vanished whence I came. I - I. She’s safe with... you here. I’ll be fine.”

“Even if I was going to let you leave, no you wouldn’t, and-” Corvo held up a hand to forestall protest. “-and, you’re still responsible for the death of that Watchman. You aren’t leaving whether you want to or not.”

There was a short silence, then the other Corvo propped himself up on his elbows and said, “What was his name? The Watchman.”

“Morgan Rowley. No friends to speak of, family all dead of the plague. One of the former Weepers.”

His double sat bolt upright and went pale. “One of the what.”

Corvo blinked at him, automatically wondering how his other self could have missed the plague ending. Then he gave himself a mental whack on the head. Clearly it hadn’t, at least for the other him. ”After Emily retook the throne, and the newspapers and so on finally got the right story, Piero and Sokolov - you saw them meet, right? - they combined their efforts and came up with an Elixir that cures the plague. And since the Weepers are still alive, as long as they weren’t too far gone, the Elixir cured them, too. Most of them had some degree of mental degradation, but nothing that impeded them from their jobs.”

The other Corvo just gaped at him, eyes wide. “Just like that?” he said, a little hoarsely.

Corvo blinked, a little surprised at the reaction. “Well, no. It took six months for them to come up with something workable, and then another six for it to be available and not expensive as hell. We’d lost most of the Legal District by then. Rudshore is still... messy.”

His double’s mouth moved, repeating “Six months,” to himself, almost soundlessly. Then, out loud, he said, “It’s been more than a year since Emily di... since she took the throne?”

Corvo sat on the bed next to his double, turning to face him. “It’s been a little over four,” he said, trying to be gentle.

“Four years.” It was a rasp, not even nearly a question. “Four years. Coldridge was...” He paused to count on his fingers. Gave a short laugh that had no humor in it. Slumped over so that his forehead rested on Corvo’s shoulder. “Three weeks ago,” he said, and Corvo drew in a sharp breath.

There was a brief pause, and then Corvo said, “When was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t want to,” his double said, voice still somewhat muffled by Corvo’s arm and coat. “Every time I close my eyes I see Emily falling, and then I’m falling too, and I drive my sword into someone’s neck and the hot blood covers my face and gets in my eyes and I’m weeping and when they drop to the ground it’s me or her or _her-_ ”

He was pushing against Corvo, who gave him the resistance he was looking for readily; his double’s gloved hand had found his own bare wrist, and was squeezing tightly enough to hurt. Given about how long it had taken Corvo to go from the bottom of Coldridge to the top of Burrows Lighthouse, give or take a day - “Have you been awake for _two weeks?_ ”

His double stilled. “The Remedies have some kind of stimulant in them. I crashed right before the Outsider brought me here. The nightmares were...” He shoved at Corvo again. “I scrounged up enough of them to last me day to day here. So... maybe a week, if you don’t count the few hours every so often from forgetting to drink the Remedy.”

No wonder his behavior had been so erratic. Corvo stared down at his other self’s head, thinking. “Okay,” he said. “Come on, get up.” He handed his confused double the mask, and gestured for him to put it on. “We don’t dream if we’re exhausted. Take your sword. Leave everything else.” Corvo got his double on his feet and moving in the right general direction, then shucked off his coat and spun his own sword into his hand, keeping it sheathed for now.

They made their way out to a secluded part of the palace grounds, a clearing often used for sparring. The sun was just beginning wander towards the horizon, so they had some light, but not a great deal, and not for long. A few Guards were trailing behind them, out of either interest or concern; they didn’t interfere, so Corvo paid them no mind for now.

His double recognized the area, of course, and stood across from Corvo in the informal circle, settling into a ready stance and unsheathing his sword as Corvo did the same. They held that pose, tense, sizing each other up, as the Guards, more of them now, stood several yards out of range.

Then the other him lunged, and Corvo spun to the side, and the fight was on. The masked Corvo corrected for the miss, and drove his sword backwards; Corvo deflected it, and they drew apart to regard each other again.

Corvo was aware that they would both make mistakes, and sloppy ones; his double was operating on quite likely as little sleep as was humanly possible, and Corvo himself was well aware he was going up against someone of exactly the same calibre as himself, and at any rate he was trying to exhaust his double, not fully incapacitate him.

This time it was Corvo who stepped closer, his sword following the line of his body so that it would drive up into his double’s chest, just under his sternum. It didn’t, of course, and his double parried, weaved around him, and slammed his arm back so that the hilt of the sword narrowly missed Corvo’s throat as he ducked.

A slash to his double’s legs proved effective, even though the only thing Corvo cut was the leather of his boots, and the blade came away unstained. His double still hissed and jumped, vaulting over Corvo to crouch on the limb of one of the trees nearby.

Well, tried to. He overbalanced, unused to using his Outsider-granted agility on this ground, and slipped off the branch. He still landed with cat’s grace in the center of the clearing, just close enough to Corvo that the latter felt the whisper of his blade against his back as he threw himself forward. The Guards, impressed with this display, whistled softly and murmured to themselves, though they weren’t so tactless as to actually clap or cheer.

If they wanted a show.... Corvo had to exhaust his other self not just physically, but mentally as well, and that meant depleting his store of magical energy. He kicked out at his double, only catching him across the chest enough to surprise him, not actually hurt him. He didn’t wait for him to recover, but Blinked up above him, sword pointed down and free hand outstretched.

Clearly his double had performed the same trick on other, unsuspecting people; he immediately dove to the side when Corvo vanished, and Corvo swept his sword to the side as he landed in a crouch, to avoid planting it in the dirt.

He grunted as his double collided with him, losing hold of his sword as they rolled. When they stopped moving, Corvo was lying on his back, with his double straddling him, opposite how they’d ended up when they first fought.

His double had also dropped his sword, which Corvo was grateful for; clearly he’d understood what Corvo was trying to do.

That didn’t mean he was giving up by any stretch of the imagination.

Corvo bucked and writhed to get free, uncaring of how it might look. His double rose up on his knees to give Corvo room to squirm; Corvo brought up his left hand and froze time.

This didn’t, obviously, have the effect he’d learned to expect from doing that, and his surprise cost him any advantage he might have had over his double, who sputtered something and rolled away, regaining his feet on the other end of the clearing. “Why aren’t they panicking,” he said shortly. His voice didn’t rise in a question, but Corvo answered all the same as he rose to a crouch.

“I’ll tell you later. It’s a four-year-long story. You can use anything as long as it doesn’t endanger them.”

His double nodded as time resumed, and even with the mask, Corvo could almost see his expression, calculating and guarded. Faintly, he heard the clink of money changing hands behind him, and whispers. He wondered what the odds were, and whether he’d find them flattering.

Then a hurricane slammed into him, and he was forced to move with it or break his... pretty much everything. There was a dark object in the gust, and Corvo risked reaching out to neatly catch the hilt of his sword. He landed in a crouch, the Guards in front of him hastily backing away.

Corvo stood slowly, sword in his hand like it had never left. He gave his double a shallow smirk over his shoulder. “Thanks for that.”

Then, knowing what would happen, and how it was going to look, he faced front, shut his eyes, and counted silently. Three, and his double had his own sword in hand. Two, and he was gathering his feet under him. One, and Corvo heard the soft exhalation as his double leaped into the air and Blinked downward.

Corvo spun around and brought his sword up just in time to block his double’s slash. They pushed against each other, and his double danced backwards, half out of parrying and half out of sheer surprise.

Time slowed, and Corvo barely noticed as he Blinked behind his double, using the hilt of his sword to rap sharply on the mask’s edge. His double stumbled forward, and the world moved normally again. Corvo stepped forward, intending to strike him across the arm, and suddenly there was a lancing pain in the side of his leg. He looked down, comprehension slowed by surprise, and saw red staining the outside of his right leg. His double had swung his sword back wildly, and through sheer luck, had drawn first blood.

Traditionally, and for the sake of not killing each other, they were supposed to discard their swords at this point and declare the duel over. Corvo had no intention of doing that, so instead, he tapped the point of his sword on his double’s mask, just enough to irritate him, then sheathed it and Blinked away.

The Guards protested vaguely as they were quickly left behind, but Corvo kept going, zigzagging up the side of the Tower to the window into his room. He was winded by the halfway mark, and his leg didn’t want to support him. There was a terrifying moment, as he caught his breath and waited for his double to get closer, in which he very nearly slipped and fell; only grabbing at the carved decorations kept him safe.

Corvo’s double caught up with him as they reached the window, Blinking to the sill barely a moment after Corvo had heaved himself inside. Unbalanced, they both went tumbling to the floor, and for a handful of seconds, neither moved, out of tiredness and the need to collect themselves. At some unspoken signal, they both sprang up, a few feet apart in the smaller space.

The masked Corvo stepped forward, throwing a punch at the side of Corvo’s head. It was incredibly telegraphed, and Corvo kicked out in the opposite direction, to halt the jab to his side. His double reeled, drunkenly, and fell hard on his back at Corvo’s shove.

Corvo waited. His double was still moving, and he wasn’t going to give up this easily. It took a few seconds, and a false start, but sure enough, the other him rose to his knees, then to his feet, staggering a little. He breathed hard, but put up his hand in loose fists, shifting his weight, waiting for Corvo to strike first.

Okay, this had gone on long enough. Time for it to be over, or his double was going to fall to the floor insensate whether he wanted to or not. Corvo moved forward sharply, but didn’t throw a punch like his double expected; instead, he barrelled into his other self, grabbing his wrists with a hand and pushing him back until his double’s knees hit the edge of the bed. They both went down, Corvo trying to keep his double from falling to the floor, and his double starting to struggle as he got over his confusion.

The other him was exhausted. Struggling didn’t do much more than make it easier for Corvo to pin his double’s wrists with his knee, using one free hand to balance with and the other to hesitantly press down on his double’s shoulder.

Corvo could feel the tense muscles in his double’s sides as he fought and kicked, a slight overworked trembling starting to become full-on shaking, from burnout or fear or just a need to do something, anything, to keep from crashing. Corvo bore down, and at a complete loss for what to do, slid his hand down to wrap around the back of his double’s neck.

The double immediately went still, and so did Corvo, not wanting to break whatever was going on. He could feel his double’s breath rasping through his throat, fast, as though the air was burning him from the inside out. Silently, the double curled up on his side, still tense and fitful, but no longer fighting.

Corvo had no idea how long they stayed like that, or how long ago the sun had set by the time he looked up, and let go. His double’s breathing had finally evened out, but Corvo had kept stroking his thumb along his double’s jugular until he felt his pulse slow from the frantic rush of battle, and the high of stimulant- and desperation-induced alertness.

A glance at the pocketwatch he kept on his bedside table, though, informed him that it was close to midnight, and suddenly Corvo found that he was incredibly tired. He tried to calculate what would be the best way for his double to wake up, then gave it up when he realized that, with an unfamiliar person, in an unfamiliar room, probably after intense nightmares, there really wasn’t ever going to be a best way for his double to wake up.

The least worst way, however, would probably involve Corvo being close by to serve as a living reminder. He gently undid the mask’s clasp from the back of his double’s head, setting it on the table and heaving his double’s body fully on the bed so that he wouldn’t fall off.

He had just enough time, after he stumbled over to the couch and lay down, to admit that maybe he had underestimated what that kind of fight would take out of him. Then he slept, and (perhaps thankfully) didn’t dream.

* * *

This is what Corvo told his double, the following morning, before he left to meet Emily:

“Oh, the Guards? I guess if you haven’t been here, it does seem strange. Well, you remember how the Abbey was before Jess- before - you know. They were just loud, and a great deal of people liked them, and technically they were in charge of the morality of the state, and so on - but nothing like what we saw when That Bastard was in charge.

“That’s Emily’s nickname for Burrows. She was only ten, and sometimes I worry what she picked up from that whole ordeal... and I let her teachers reprimand her for swearing, but she knows I’ll let her get away with it because I find it fairly accurate.

“Don’t laugh, you were there too. --Sorry. The Guards, right. Anyway, Emily was annoyed that the Overseers prevented her from doing what she liked, and while that might not have been the noblest reason, enough of the court also wanted them gone for one reason or another that they backed her. And once she turned twelve, and we let her run wild during the Fugue Feast - within _reason,_ sit _down_ \- that was basically the end of it; all she needed was a good reason to send them all packing.

“At that point, two things had happened: the plague was more or less gone, except for a few cases that were quickly cured; and among Emily’s trusted advisors - her, me, our Spymistress, our Captain of the Guard, our Stewardess of the House, and the High Overseer, none of whom you know, I think - my Mark was more or less an open secret. Obviously the High Overseer was keen on the ‘secret’ part, and I didn’t do anything like Blink around in front of him, but as time went by, ‘it’s just a tattoo’ became an increasingly flimsy excuse, and it was increasingly blatant that everyone was aware of it, and turning a blind eye.

“But the plague was cured, and while Sokolov and Piero were having great fun inventing all sorts of outlandish things at the Academy, eventually Sokolov wanted to try for Pandyssia again. He applied to Emily for funds and a willing crew and leave, since technically he was working for the Crown at that point, and then we all collectively hit on the same brilliant idea at once:

“Send the Abbey with him.

“Yes, that was about the High Overseer’s reaction, too. After he got over his obliged indignation, anyway. We made up something clever-sounding about protecting the crew and the merchants they’d meet and so on, and the zealots went for it like hagfish. The ones that stayed were the ones more concerned with studying and theory than actually hunting down witches, which suited us just fine.”

At this point, his double had held up a hand to stop him. “You probably have no idea, but there’s this Overseer named Windham. Do you know what...?”

Corvo laughed. “I guess you looked through all their mail too. He stayed, in some quiet corner of the city. I put in a good word for him.”

The double nodded, and gestured for Corvo to continue.

“Right, so the Abbey wasn’t a problem. What was a problem was the Guards’ apparently awful training. Do you know that I don’t think a single one of them knew how to look up? Not to mention the general lack of suspicion regarding the environment-”

“I know. I was there, too, remember? None of them knew how to deal with me Blinking up to them and stabbing them. Not even an attempt to block.”

Corvo paused after taking a breath to speak, and blinked at his double. “That, uh... that wasn’t something I noticed at first, really.”

There was a slightly awkward pause. “Uh, right. Yeah. You... wouldn’t have. So, uh, why don’t you continue your story?”

Corvo took the clumsy subject change for what it was. “Anyway. I’d done some more focused training with the Guards during the first year, weeding out the ones who weren’t good enough and making sure the ones who were could actually see an enemy wandering through their midst. But while that was all well and good, we had a string of killings going on, and I was starting to suspect Daud and his Whalers-”

The other him almost fell off the bed, where he’d been lounging. “You didn’t kill him?”

“I assume you did?”

His double grinned, twisted and too thin around the edges. “Of course I did. I saw him _stab_ her and I had him there sitting pretty and what was I supposed to do, _not_ return the favor?”

Corvo tugged on his other boot and stood straight, shrugging. “Well, I don’t fault you his death. I simply hadn’t killed anyone at that point, I wasn’t about to start, and I had no idea how many Whalers would come running. I knocked him out, stole his key and charm, and left him in a chair. It was quiet and it sent a message. We didn’t hear anything from or about them until the plague was starting to be over with.”

“At which point the Overseers were gone and the Guards were all reasonably competent, et cetera.”

“Yes. I cleared this with Emily and her advisors, of course. The court nannies didn’t hear a word of it, but the ones whose advice actually counted did. They agreed, after... some convincing-”

Corvo had to wait patiently for his double to stop laughing at that mental image.

“-they agreed, and so I started taking the Guards aside one by one and telling them about the Whalers being given abilities by the Outsider, and how I had similar abilities - I may have told them something vague that didn’t make me sound completely evil, I don’t remember. The end result was, I started training a select group to deal with supernatural abilities, both things I had used to avoid detection and things I’d seen the Whalers do. Eventually the ‘select group’ included almost everyone who’d made it into the Tower Guard, and most of the people who were regularly around the Tower knew what was going on. At this point, getting hauled off for being a heretic is about as likely as being hauled off for starting the plague.”

His double nodded. “Fair enough. What am I supposed to do for the rest of the day, just sit here?”

Corvo buckled on his sword belt and grabbed his pocketwatch from the table. “I don’t know. Try to sleep more. Just don’t do anything permanent, and don’t let anyone know you’re here. We can deal with that in a week. Let me talk with Emily first.”

The other him made a small noise as he remembered something. “I think I may have part of a solution to our... similarity problem.”

Corvo tipped his head to the side as he listened to his double’s elaboration, then promised to present the solution to Emily as he walked out into the hallway and shut the door behind him.

The Corvo still in the room flopped back down on the bed. Like hell was he sleeping, so what kind of trouble could he get in without doing anything permanent....?

* * *

“Of course, Your Majesty. I was simply meaning to suggest that with the unexpected level of resistance from the heretics already deeply mired in the influence of the Outsider, it might be prudent to send a selection of staunch City Watchmen to aid in bringing salvation and civilization to those areas of the continent worthy of being under the kind protection of the Empire.”

Corvo watched Emily out of the corner of his eye, she in turn watching the last petitioner of the day sniveling in front of her throne. She had enough training to conceal it from her Court - she’d had enough training when she was ten - but Corvo could see the muscles of her jaw flex as she stifled a yawn. He didn’t blame her. As alert as he always was, even he found the Court soporific.

“As I have made clear to your High Overseer, the matter on the Pandyssian continent is not one with which the Empire feels we must overly concern ourselves. We must first and always strive to better ourselves before looking to give aid, for although it is natural, even morally just, to wish to raise up those beneath us, our own Strictures say to not let our hands be idle and our feet wander. We have much to do here in the Isles - indeed, here in Dunwall - before our hands are in any danger of idling, and before our feet may wander to Pandyssia. We thank you for your concern in this matter, Overseer Gardner, but your request is for the time denied.”

The Overseer bowed deeply, badly concealing his displeasure. Emily stood and turned to the rest of her audience, as they rose in a gesture of respect. “Thank you all for attending. These petitions have given me much to ponder, in the course of conducting the affairs of state. At this time, I am formally closing the Court to the public, so that I may meet and discuss matters with my advisors. Those with concerns involving affairs of the Empire, Dunwall, or the Imperial will may petition for an audience tomorrow morning.”

She sat back down, primly waiting as most of the assembled people shuffled and coughed and muttered their way out of the throne room. After ten minutes, the grand, spacious room was empty save for Emily, Corvo, and her advisors (excepting High Overseer Goodwin), who had made their way into the room in the interim or simply waited for the crowd to leave.

Emily sighed theatrically and slumped back in her chair. “It’s over, it’s over! Can we just declare a tyranny or something and say that we’ll never do that again?”

“No, dear,” said Lady O’Riley, appearing beside Emily’s throne. After three and a half years, Corvo knew without a doubt that she did not have any Outsider-granted abilities, but he’d be damned if sometimes he didn’t still wonder. She was Spymistress for a reason. “If we declare a tyranny,” she continued, blithely ignoring Corvo’s reflex reaction, “that means that we have to do all the paperwork ourselves. And then we get things like the peasants rising up, and so on.”

“We already do all the paperwork ourselves,” Emily said, frowning.

“No, you don’t,” Miss Kennings said. “I should know.”

Emily stuck her tongue out at the Stewardess, which gave Corvo the opening to say, “And we shouldn’t be advocating tyranny, paperwork or no,” with a pointed look at Hannah. She hid her mouth behind her fan and giggled.

“The people don’t like it much, either,” Captain Trent put in, “and I’ll give you a gold piece if you can tell me the last time an Emperor tested that theory.”

Emily perked up visibly. Of all of them, it was Erasmus who was most interested in Emily’s schooling, and had an interest in history himself. He’d made a habit of dispensing small bribes for the correct historical facts.

“Well, that’d be four years ago, with That Bastard, right? That’s too easy for a gold piece; I lived through it.”

Corvo shifted slightly, not sure whether he liked where this was going. Trent glanced at him, then adopted a lecturing tone and said, “You’re right; it was too easy. I said the last Emperor who tried it. Hiram Burrows was the...?”

“Lord Regent,” Emily said dutifully. “The last Emperor who declared himself in supreme control was... ah....” She subsided, twisting her mouth in thought. After a minute, she glanced surreptitiously at Corvo, who shrugged; history wasn’t his strong suit.

There was silence for a few moments, only broken by the firm tenor and flighty soprano tones of Miss Kennings and Lady O’Riley speaking quietly. Captain Trent, seeing that this wasn’t going to be a short meeting, grabbed a nearby chair and spun it around to sit in it backwards; at which point High Overseer Goodwin burst through one of the side doors of the courtroom and skidded to a stop.

Trent muttered vague curses from the floor, where he’d ended up after jumping in surprise and falling off the chair. Goodwin blinked at him, then faced Emily and bowed in greeting, saying, “My apologies for my lateness, Empress. The Overseers wished to converse with me following your... decisions on the Pandyssian venture.”

“You mean they wanted to get you to get me to let them do whatever they like,” Emily said. “Stop being formal, I just got through a whole day of that.”

Goodwin’s mouth twisted in concealed amusement. “I suppose so. Sorry. What are we discussing?”

Emily eyed him with interest. “Who was the last Emperor who became a tyrant?”

“That would be Calret the Third, last of the Juris line. He was also the last Tyvian to be Emperor; after that it was decreed by Parliament that the Emperor or Empress must always be Gristolian. Why?”

Corvo covered his mouth to hide a smile; both Miss Kennings and Lady O’Riley were doing no such thing, and laughing openly as Goodwin stared at them all in confusion. Emily turned to Trent. “There, what he said.”

Trent, back on the chair, nodded and smiled before taking out a gold piece. “Goodwin,” he said, “catch.”

Goodwin turned his gaze from the room to the coin, as though he’d never seen one before. “I’ve missed something, haven’t I?” he asked, in a somewhat long-suffering tone. He pocketed the coin, though.

“He answered the question, he gets the prize,” Trent said to Emily, who was looking indignant at him.

She deflated at this and scowled at nothing in particular. “Fine.”

“So, Corvo,” Lady O’Riley said, a little flirtatiously. “Mind telling us who our guest in the rafters is? He’s been perched there for almost an hour, and what I find _very_ interesting is that it’s impossible to get to where he’s sitting from the ground.” Her voice was deceptively calm, and the others in the room turned to stare at Corvo, who internally groaned and shut his eyes to search the room with the Void’s help.

Sure enough, hidden from view, a figure crouched high above them, the Mark blazing on his left hand. “I thought you were going to stay put,” he called up.

His double shifted his weight and Blinked into the center of the loose circle they’d made, on Emily’s other side. His sword was drawn and his face was hidden behind the mask. “Who are these people?” he said quietly.

“They’re trusted,” Emily said, pointedly.

“No one can be trusted.”

“I know,” Corvo said. Blue glass eyes stared at him for a taut moment.

The double sheathed his sword. “The question still stands.”

Lady O’Riley had moved in front of Miss Kennings, and was fingering something hidden in the folds of her skirt. Corvo suspected it was sharp and aerodynamic. Captain Trent and Goodwin were more obviously readying their weapons.

“This,” said Emily, with grace and no small amount of force, “is Corvo. Specifically, they both are.”

Predictably, this earned her a collection of looks that suggested she needed to have her head examined. She sighed and gestured at the masked Corvo, who reluctantly slipped off the mask, to general shock.

“To get the obvious questions out of the way,” Corvo said, “no, we don’t know why or how-” _Mostly, anyway._ “-yes, we’re assuming he’s here to stay, no, we don’t know what to do with him, and no, he’s not exactly the same as me.”

“Well, we could tell that just from looking at you,” Miss Kennings pointed out, stepping around Lady O’Riley and gesturing to the Corvos’ hair and clothing. “The real question is, what’s going to happen now? And how much of this is the public going to know?”

“We don’t know yet,” Emily cut in, standing up. “Hopefully, no more than necessary. Introductions first - Corvo, this is High Overseer Raphael Goodwin; Captain of the Guard Erasmus Trent; Lady Spymistress Hannah O’Riley-”

“Call me Hannah,” the Spymistress purred. Corvo wasted a moment being confused that she was flirting with his double but had never done so with him, then chalked it up to Lady O’Riley’s - or apparently, Hannah’s - general machinations.

“-and Stewardess of the House Miss Esmeralda Kennings.”

The double blinked at this, but wisely didn’t say anything.

“Well, it’s marvelous that you know our names,” Miss Kennings said, “but what do we call you? We can’t say ‘Corvo’ unless we want you both to snap to.”

The Corvos glanced at each other over Emily’s head. “Ah... we don’t know yet,” admitted the first one. “Just... I don’t know. Just point or something if you’re confused.” This earned him a lot of flat, skeptical looks.

The other Corvo stepped in. “We were thinking, at least visually, of having different coats. As in, his would be blue and gold, mine would be blue and silver, or some such.”

“But what would stop you from - oh,” Goodwin said, catching Hannah’s smirk. “You’re planning on it, aren’t you?”

They exchanged another glance, and Emily rolled her eyes. “Okay, you two can stop that now. Everyone, sit down, and we’ll work out what if anything needs to be done.”


	2. scene snippets & Fugue Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you think I would write something involving two people who are almost the same person but not quite and _not_ have them fuck, boy howdy you have got a lot to learn.

“Why should we help you?” Corvo’s double said suspiciously.

The Outsider’s eyes were wild, obsidian set in fury. His mouth twisted into a snarl as he snapped his gaze to the Corvo who’d spoken. “I made you! Everything you are, everything you became, I gave you that-” His voice grew deadly. “-and I can take it away.”

Corvo suddenly felt... nothing. He was marginally aware that something had changed, but change wasn’t something he needed to worry about now. Color had faded. How interesting. He could still see perfectly well, though, so it didn’t matter. Nothing, he found, truly _mattered_ anymore. There were varying degrees of priority, but he had no pressing goals at the moment, and so there was no need to attend to anything specifically.

Corvo became aware that he wasn’t breathing, and that his double was staring at him, face contorted strangely. Corvo wished he would stop. It wasn’t as though either of them needed to accomplish anything currently. It took energy to do anything; thus, the logical thing to do was to limit all the superfluous actions he could control.

His double crossed the space between them, and grabbed Corvo’s head to stare into his eyes. Come to think of it, his double was somewhat superfluous too. Corvo considered the option of killing him, then realized that it would likely be a waste of energy and resources, since he wasn’t entirely sure that killing the other him in the Void would kill him in real life as well. It could wait.

For now, Corvo just stared impassively back at his double. There had to be a logical reason he was displaying this behavior. It wasn’t as though this was a routine action for either of them. The last time this had happened was during the Fugue Feast, and they’d... because....

Something behind Corvo’s eyes finally made the connection, and he gasped as color flooded back into the world, breath shuddering in his haste to get air into his lungs. He looked at his double in horror, realizing what had just happened, and saw his own expression mirrored there, pale and shaking.

“Ah, true human emotion,” the Outsider said, sounding somewhat like his usual aloof self. “How delightfully primitiveof you.”

Both Corvos turned to glare at him. “So why do you need us, then?” Corvo said, voice rough and breath still uneven. “Round up some natives and get them to emote. Seduce some Overseers, Outsider knows we all have here.”

_“Do you think I haven’t tried?”_ the Outside spat. The edges of his body seemed to flicker for a moment, blue magnesium flaring in his eyes and at his fingertips, and as he took an angry step towards them something strong and tidal surged forward with him.

He regained control within less than a second, but both Corvos had seen it, and were suitably spooked.

* * *

“When I talked to Piero about it, he… well, he rambled for a while, mostly using words that it’s possibly only he and Sokolov understand.”

“So he was Piero, is what you’re saying.”

Corvo snorted. “I guess some things don’t change with time. The upshot of it, after he realized that he was more or less talking to himself, was that this Plague, the Rat Plague by some other name, had been brought over to Serkonos a long time ago. Not everybody died of it, and the people that were left were immune, and now so are we because we’re descended from them, I think.”

His double gave him a strange look. “What? How does _that_ work?”

Corvo shrugged. “I don’t know. Magic? Ask Piero.”

* * *

Corvo tapped his fingers against his leg, far too alert for the motion to be casual. The last day of the Month of Songs, and especially the hours of darkness leading up to midnight, were charged and electric. No one could stay still or calm; even those too young to participate were picking up on it. Goodwin had started making himself scarcer and scarcer, as he prepared to vanish to wherever he went every year. Lady O’Riley had slowly begun to “lose” clothing as the day progressed; in a few hours she would be at the very limits of propriety.

Only Corvo’s double was able to at least mostly ignore the tense atmosphere. He stood at Emily’s side as steady as always, and - well, in retrospect, it was obvious what he was expecting to happen. At the time, though, Corvo couldn’t fathom what was going through his double’s head.

There was a profound sense of relief from the crowd when Emily closed Court that day. The sun was setting. People wanted to get home, to barricade themselves or prepare small treats as an offering to potentially malicious wanderers, or roam the streets in masks and little else.

Likewise, the usual meeting of Emily’s advisors was truncated to the point of non-existence. Miss Kennings only arrived for a moment to check that Emily was safe and comfortable before departing in a frazzled cloud of muttered lists. Goodwin simply did not appear at all; he was getting ready for the announcement of the Feast, as was Trent… though presumably they had different methods. Lady O’Riley, on the other hand, stayed in the Courtroom, chatting with Emily and eventually clad only in a slip that barely reached her knees. She laughed gaily when both Corvos blushed and stared at their feet, more so when they pointed out that the Feast had not yet begun.

As the clock struck eleven, an audiograph announcement that the Feast would begin in an hour played. Emily glanced up, and beckoned at her Lord Protectors. “Come on. We need to get you prettied up for Fugue.”

The double stared at her blankly as Corvo groaned. “You’re going to turn this into some kind of _tradition,_ aren’t you?”

Emily just grinned, in that innocently evil way she’d perfected when she was ten, and beckoned again. They followed this time, Hannah trailing after, looking anticipatory.

The double glanced between Corvo, Emily, and Hannah, still bewildered. “What tradition? What’s going on?”

Corvo sighed, pitching his voice so that Emily would hear. “Last Fugue Feast, _someone_ decided that her Royal Protector wasn’t having enough _fun,_ since he was being _sane_ all night to make sure she wouldn’t get… what was the phrase?”

“‘Carted off by infidels,’ I think,” Emily called back, giggling. “So I decided to intervene.”

“As did I,” Hannah murmured, low enough that Emily didn’t hear. The other Corvo twisted around to give her an incredulous look. She smiled sweetly.

At this point, they had reached the door to Emily’s suite. She entered and began bustling around, collecting various paints and implements (likely on loan from Hannah), the purpose of which Corvo couldn’t begin to guess. He and Hannah herded his double into the center of the room and sat him down in the lone chair. Despite his increasing confusion, and the tinge of alarm that was on the edges of that, the other Corvo let himself be manipulated, and didn’t try to escape until Emily came toward him with a red-tipped brush.

“Uh, wait, what are you… wait, no-”

Corvo clapped his hands down on his double’s shoulders. “Nope,” he said cheerfully. “Your turn.”

The other him subsided at the reminder that Corvo had sat still for this as well, and dutifully let Emily mark his lips up with the red paint.

Corvo was aware, after a few minutes had gone by, that his double likely won’t try to move, and that he was standing in uncomfortably close proximity to him given the company and setting. He was also very aware that the clock was ticking ever closer to midnight.

He couldn’t see much of what Emily was doing, standing behind his double as he was. The best gauge he had was Hannah’s face, and eventually her instructions as well, both of which were more cryptic than illustrative. At one point, Emily reached for the double’s eyes with what looked like a charcoal pencil; the double balked.

Corvo, without thinking, swept one of his hands along the base of his double’s throat, tracing his pulse lightly with his thumb. The small, shocked breath that his double took through parted lips wasn’t particularly loud, but in the still air and the muted roar of the crowd below, it was suddenly all Corvo heard. The other him shifted in his seat, badly concealing his arousal.

With excellent timing, the roar below resolved itself into a countdown, and in time with the crowd, the clock chimed to signal midnight. The Fugue Feast was upon them.

Corvo risked a glance at the others. Hannah had shucked off her slip, and this time Corvo stared unabashedly. She in turn was staring at the other Corvo, looking between the first Corvo’s hand on the latter’s throat and the growing bulge at both of their crotches - the chair wasn’t doing either Corvo any favors of discretion.

Emily applied the last of whatever the pencil was to the double’s eyelids, glancing downward every so often with a curious and somewhat gratified expression. At last she stepped back. “There. I don’t think I can do any more,” she said.

The double stood up, and had he turned around then, Corvo probably would have burst into laughter. He was familiar with what Emily did with cosmetic paint when given free rein; the results were often less than artistic. Luckily for the rest of the night, Hannah came back to the present moment and stepped forward hastily. “Here - not quite yet. Let me….” She prodded and used her thumb to do something to the paint, then nodded, satisfied. “There you go.”

Corvo’s double turned to face him, and was met with astonished silence.

“Well? Go on, laugh, get it out of the way.”

Corvo was struck by the sudden thought that he looked _good._ Not in a narcissistic way, although he’d be lying if he said that wasn’t a small part of it - but his eyes were dark, the black grease making them heavy, and his cheeks were subtly flushed. The whole effect was one of elegant impropriety; of someone caught at something he shouldn’t be doing.

When Corvo spoke, his voice was husky. “Did I look this good last year?”

“No,” both Emily and Hannah said. “Worse,” said Emily, who’d been fourteen and hadn’t known how to apply paints.

“Better,” said Hannah, who was Lady Spymistress, and had.

The other Corvo blinked at them all. “What are you talking about? I’m wearing paint on my face, of course I don’t look good.”

Emily stifled a giggle. Corvo stepped forward quickly, and, grabbing the front of his double’s shirt for stability, pressed their lips together in a crushing kiss.

He heard two simultaneous gasps from Emily and Hannah, then a breathless, “Oh,” that he couldn’t place.

His double tensed, and Corvo backed off, guessing that he’d misjudged. Fugue it might be, but if he wasn’t wanted….

“Do it again,” Emily said quietly. Despite the phrasing, it was a request, not a command. Corvo waited to see what his double would do.

As it turned out, what his double did was raised a tentative hand to Corvo’s face, cupping his cheek. Corvo stood still, breathing, tasting the bitter paint on his lips. Slowly, almost shyly, the double leaned forward, until they were an inch apart, less, so close that a moment’s lost balance could push them together. Corvo became aware that his double was trembling, with shivers so fine that he could barely feel them.

The Fugue Feast was upon them. Corvo closed the distance, and his double’s mouth was sure against his own.

As eager as he’d been in getting to this point, he know, viscerally, that there was no need to rush, and both of them kept their movements relaxed accordingly. Steady hands undid buttons and buckles that were a mirror image of their own, until they were left with only undergarments, and a slow-motion version of a shoving match involving hips and chests and mouths much more than it did hands.

They broke off there, mindful of their rapt audience. The double rested his head on Corvo’s shoulder, and Hannah made a small noise of disappointment before realizing what the problem was and looking over at Emily.

Emily blinked for a moment before comprehending. “What, are you afraid of scarring me for life or something?”

The three adults looked at each other and said, in unison, “Yes.”

The teenage Empress narrowed her eyes. When this failed to produce the desired results, she snorted in the sort of indignant disdain that only the adolescent can achieve. “Fine. Well, in that case, I’m staying here. You’ll have to find somewhere else to take all your clothes off.”

This was fine by Corvo, who along with his double began making his sinuous way out, ignoring the clothes on the floor. As they left, Corvo thought he heard Hannah whisper, “Just wait a few hours,” but when he turned to see her, she was smiling quietly at them and waving farewell.

They wound up in a secluded but decently-trafficked area that someone had thoughtfully laid a number of blankets down in. A few other lounged, sleeping or masturbating or high, and they seemed content to stay in their own separate worlds.

Somehow they’d never quite lost the momentum of that push and pull, and they kissed and touched at the same languid pace for the rest of the Feast. They didn’t have the thrill of discovering each other’s sweet spots, or favorite techniques or any of that - what they did have was the discovery of their own bodies. Corvo found out exactly what noise he made when someone bit the space between his neck and shoulder, knew precisely what his face looked like when he knelt between his double’s legs and looked up.

For all that, though, the sex was mostly a background constant, something that Corvo remembered as a blur with clearly defined events scattered in between. Occasionally people watched them, idly or with interest. Occasionally Corvo came, or his double, or both of them; the first time when the room was empty, alone and together; once in a circle of voyeurs, delighting in the attention; once with a laughing anonymous woman between them.

In one of their quieter moments, Piero had wandered by. He had held their Outsider-marked hands in his own, staring down at them as though they would give him the answers he sought. After some time he left, without having said a word.

Once Emily found them, evidently having followed Hannah’s advice. She just stood quietly; she was the only one they didn’t put on a show for.

Miss Kennings saw them, and loudly wondered whether this counted as incest or mastubation; they dragged her between them, and slowly loosened her clothes until she extricated herself, pleading flustered excuses.

Hannah sat on Corvo’s chest naked, and painted his face in blue and gold while his double sucked him off. He writhed and jerked his head when he came, and wouldn’t let Hannah clean away the resulting stripe of gold. She made it a part of her design, and the next time he looked in a mirror he saw a Fugue mask painted on his skin.

They spent an hour tracing scars, and telling the stories of the ones that didn’t match.

Tears marred the paint on both of their faces, but Corvo couldn’t remember when, or why.

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he woke up in his own bed, in the dark, hearing the High Overseer’s announcement of the new year His double was sitting on the floor against the wall, staring out of the window, fully clothed. He glanced over when Corvo stirred. “It was…. What we did… it was the Fugue Feast. Right?”

He’d washed off the paint, Corvo realized, still not quite registering things in the right order. And there was something indecipherable in his voice. Corvo wasn’t sure what the answer to that question was, but he was well aware what it was supposed to be: “Yes,” he mumbled. “Just the Feast.”

His double made a small noise, and they lapsed into silence, and, eventually, sleep.


	3. Notes and timeline

Lady Hannah O’Riley, from Morley, is the Royal Spymistress. She is a Lady by convenience, not by birth or earning.

Captain Erasmus Trent, from Gristol, is the Captain of the Tower Guard. The “Captain” title is honorary, and denotes his Court position rather than his military one, which would be higher. He’s a down-to-earth sort of fellow, with the opinion that, by and large, if it doesn’t really change anything, and it doesn’t put anyone in danger, what’s the use worrying?

Miss Esmeralda Kennings, from Gristol, is the Stewardess of the House and Court of Dunwall. She’s the one who keeps the day-to-day workings of the house in order, keeps everything well-stocked and clean, and manages the staff so that Emily doesn’t have to. Of all the advisors, she is the most irreplaceable. She is of the opinion that she was touched by the Outsider in her mother’s womb, so that the wrong body would grow around her soul. She is thin, but tall and broad-shouldered for a woman. Those who refuse to accept that she is, in fact, a woman suffer the quiet but pointed wrath of the person who controls the small, important things.

High Overseer Raphael Goodwin, from Gristol, is the... well, the High Overseer. He was chosen by Corvo/Emily, and forced through the voting, given the fiasco with the last two.

Timeline:

T-4y6m (start of spring): Empress Jessamine Kaldwin is murdered; Emily is abducted. Corvo is framed.

T-4y1w: Corvo escapes Coldridge Prison.

T-4y4d: Corvo is betrayed and poisoned.

T-4y1d: Corvo wakes from delirium, sends Daud his message, and frees Emily (again).

T-4y (late summer/start of fall): Emily’s rushed coronation. Dunwall begins the slow process of healing. Emily’s first act as Empress is to make Anton Sokolov and Piero Joplin joint Royal Physicians. She entrusts Corvo with finding her a suitable Royal Spymaster, Captain of the Guard, Steward of the House, etc.

T-3y51w: hc|Corvo’s timeline ends; his Dunwall is collapsing.

T-3y50w: former Steward of the House found to be accepting bribes; new Stewardess promoted (Miss Esmeralda Kennings).

T-3y11m1w: New High Overseer found, forced through voting process by Imperial decree.

T-3y11m: Piero and Sokolov’s Stun Pylon becomes practically a household object. Work on a cure for the Rat Plague commences in earnest. Rudshore is sealed completely. No word from Whalers.

T-3y10.5m: Corvo deems the Tower and Dunwall stable enough to begin intensive training and start purging the Tower Guard of incompetence. Emily turns eleven.

T-3y9.5m: Former Captain of the Guard found to be infected with the Plague. He dies shortly thereafter. New Captain (Cpt. Erasmus Trent) promoted.

T-3y9m (start of winter): Purge begins to extend to the Dunwall City Watch.

T-3y8.5m: Overseers make noise about new restrictions placed by Emily on their influence and reach. Still no word from/about Whalers. Overseers still patrol the the streets but are not allowed to make arrests.

T-3y8m: Fugue Feast. Almost unilaterally, people either don’t have the energy to participate or do so because they are frustrated, hurt, and need an outlet. There’s a lot of property damage. Everyone helps fix things up.

T-3y6m (start of spring): First plague victim cured. Work started to make cure reliable and cost-effective. Spymistress found (Lady O’Riley).

T-3y5m: Tower Guard is widely known as an elite, best-of-the-best force. Dunwall City Watch is not far behind; Abbey’s reach is further curtailed.

T-3y4m: Trusted advisors are at this point aware of Corvo’s powers, more or less. Tensions rise between Abbey and Court. Ambassadors from the other Isles begin to mutter about unwelcome intrusions (esp. Morley).

T-3y3m (start of summer): Emily falls ill from the Plague. She is cured within the week, but attention is brought to the fact that Corvo, despite high exposure, is perfectly healthy. It turns out that the disease had been brought over to Serkonos before, in some form, and Serkonans like Corvo have a higher chance of being genetically immune to the Rat Plague. His blood sample provides the breakthrough needed to mass-produce a cure.

T-3y (start of fall): Plague more or less eradicated in Dunwall and Gristrol. Rudshore opened from quarantine for cleanup and rehabilitation. Preliminary rumors of “shadows moving on their own,” etc.

T-2y10.5m: Emily turns 12, legal age of self-governance (or actual governance, in Emily’s case), legal age of work, and the legal age where one can participate in the Fugue Feast, by Abbey law that is older than the Empire itself. Emily’s choice of Royal Protector is, of course, Corvo. Court vs. Overseer passive-aggressive bitching reaches its high.

T-2y9m: Start of winter.

T-2y8m: Emily’s first Fugue Feast. She is allowed to run wild within the Tower grounds. (Given that she is the only twelve-year-old in the Tower, the mask doesn’t do much to conceal her identity. It’s a relatively subdued Fugue Feast; none of Emily’s advisors take part.)

T-2y7.5m: Noble known for pressuring servants into sex found dead. No clues except that one maid is strangely triumphant and also broke. Corvo suspects Whalers; tells no one but Emily and Lady O’Riley.

T-2y6m (spring): Sokolov leaves for Pandyssia with contingent of Overseers. Tensions lessen in court.

T-2y5m: More deaths discovered. Despicable people every time, but Corvo is worried. He begins training a few Tower Guards to deal with supernatural threats.

T-2y3.5m: Most Overseers gone. About half the Guard and most of the Tower servants know of Corvo’s powers.

T-2y3m: Start of summer.

T-2y (fall): All Guards trained. All Tower regulars at least peripherally aware of Corvo’s powers. Deaths have continued but no one cares that much - they all hate the victims.

T-1y10.5m: Emily turns 13.

T-1y10m1w: Body of a servant found in the stocks in the middle of Holger Square. Carved into his back, and painted in his blood on the stone behind him, is DO NOT CROSS THE WHALERS. For the first time in three years, Corvo puts on the mask and goes out to hunt Daud.

T-1y10m3d: Corvo infiltrates the Whalers’ base and sits unmoving in the rafters until Daud notices him and explains himself, fully expecting that he is going to die. What happened was that the man had tried to hire Daud’s Whalers to kill his ex-lover. When they refused - she’d done nothing wrong - he tried to attack the assassin doing business with him. They took the opportunity for publicity. Corvo, silent thus far, tells Daud that he doesn’t just protect the Empress, he protects Dunwall; he will take every innocent death out of Daud’s hide. Corvo leaves him with a ruined eye and a scar on his arm, and vanishes.

T-1y9m (winter): deaths of uncaught criminals, untouchable corrupt nobles, etc, resume.

T-1y8m: Fugue Feast. The atmosphere is joyous and rambunctious, glad to be alive. Corvo, Miss Kennings, and Lady Riley are the only three who do not participate. High Overseer Goodwin vanishes entirely until it is time to end the Feast. Everyone has their own theory on where he went and what he was doing. (Emily is still confined to the Tower, and will be until she turns sixteen (legal age of full adulthood in Gristol)).

T-1y6m: start of spring

T-1y3m: start of summer

T-1y: start of fall

T-11m: Overseers begin requesting, faintly, that more Watchmen be sent to Pandyssia. The requests are denied, save for volunteers.

T-10.5m: Emily turns 14

T-9m: start of winter

T-8m: Fugue Feast. Emily more or less makes Corvo participate, by deciding to “pretty him up.” Due to the fact that Emily is fourteen, the effect she achieves is closer to “disoriented” than “pretty” Due to the fact that Lady O’Riley and Miss Kennings decided to help out afterwards, the effect Corvo achieves is less “hot mess” and more “devastatingly androgynous.”

T-6m: start of spring

T-3m: start of summer

T-1.5m: High Overseer points out that the Pandyssian expedition is, against all odds, actually doing rather well, and the requests for reinforcements will as such only get more insistent.

T-1m: The first solid sign of success comes: a ship bearing goods from Pandyssia, and news from the colony town of Kaldton.

T: start of fall. Corvo gets a weird and vaguely alarming lecture from the Outsider.

T+1w: alt!Corvo arrives. Confused and panicked, he gets in an altercation with a Watchman (Morgan Rowley) and kills him. He runs. Corvo hears about it and starts to hunt him down.

T+1w3d: Corvo finds… Corvo. Fights him, KO’s him, and takes him back to the Tower. Emily is filled in, and Corvo(s) start figuring out inconsistencies. Corvo fights his double in order to exhaust him.

T+1w4d: Corvo explains about Guards, Daud, etc. alt!Corvo meets Emily’s advisors, explains the gold/silver color schemes. Gets his hair washed.


End file.
